I Feel So Much Better Now That I Know

The Big First Day of School has come and gone. What I didn't know all those years as a student was the unsaid truth that teachers are just as nervous as their students on the first day. They can't sleep the night before. They worry about what to wear. They hope people will like them, that they will have someone to eat lunch with, and that their schedule isn't too hard. Wherever you are, whomever you are, please put your hands together for teachers. I want to hear you clapping in Nebraska.

That's right.

I have the Awesome and Insightful task of sweeping the whole school with an intelligence test. Those who qualify will get to hang out with me in the Gifted room for an hour each day. As I was studying this test I came across a speech given by a mother of 5 Gifted children. This experience was so daunting to her, she decided to go back to school and get approximately 75 degrees of Gifted education. Part of her speech listed characteristics of Gifted children and adults. As I read her summation, I was stunned.

It was like she knew me.

And Chup.

It looked like my emotional grocery shopping list.

And I knew, like I have never known before.

Je suis Gifted.

C'est la meme pour Chup.

Sure I was put into Gifted classes as a student, but I was always the class clown of the GT group. I barely made it and I knew it.

Chup was so quiet his teacher sometimes forgot he was in the classroom.

Coming to this knowledge, understanding it and accepting it yesterday was such a relief! We're not social misfits Chupa and I, we're Gifted thinkers. We have Giftedness.

We can stop apologizing for:

Hating experiences most people like.

Being picky eaters.

Wearing the same clothes everyday.

Feeling desirability in becoming anti-social.

Feeling happily self-contained at home.

Being over-analytical.

Wanting to take things a part and make them better.

Feeling a general sense of boredom most all the time.

An increase in sensitivity and emotion.

And, I'm not kidding, my impeccable sense of cold. And smell.

To celebrate my first day, and this BREAKTHROUGH, I made some delightful butternut squash soup. Chup had one spoonful and crinkled his face like I had just whipped up, and dished out, Rat Droppings Delight.
It's ok. I thought to myself.
Be gentle.
He's Gifted.

Later I found this note on the kitchen counter:
thanks for trying to spice up our lives.
sorry I'm picky-sorry I didn't like it...
try again soon?

Knowing that we are Gifted has really saved our marriage.


Already.